The People's Necromancer Read online

  It didn’t matter who Ashton was—that he served the community in a respectable profession. There were laws that declared such punishments had to be done. According to people who told stories every weekend in the town square, the only thing more dangerous to the public than a paladin was a necromancer.

  But he couldn’t be a necromancer! He hadn’t brought Clayton back from the dead. It must have been someone else. Someone nefarious. Lurking in the shadows. Casting a spell from afar. That’s how they did it in the fables. They weren’t crying over a friend’s grave. They weren’t hovering over morning glories and blue stones!

  He couldn’t stop thinking about punitive fire consuming his feet, working its way upward. He was a smith’s apprentice. He knew the pain of flames. His hands had become accustomed to heat, but they still blistered and peeled when he was clumsy. In truth, falling into a vat of lead or molten pig iron or a forge was one of his greatest fears. He couldn’t burn to death. He wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, and he definitely wouldn’t wish that fate on himself.

  So, he ran. He ran northeast for the whole morning, stopping only for a mouthful of water out of a stagnant, foul-smelling pond in someone’s yard. A crack of a stick somewhere set him off though, and he didn’t drink his fill. He stumbled in the mud along the shore, panting hard and swiveling in every direction as he tried to figure out if Clayton had passed him and circled around.

  He ran so hard and for so long that he soon found himself in Caller’s Forest, some 15 miles east of Perketh. If he kept going this way, he’d eventually reach the elven lands, but he couldn’t take another step. He hadn’t eaten all day and most of the day before. But his loud stomach growls weren’t enough to distract him from the task at hand. As soon as he saw a bed of moss and grass by the side of the road, he fell down into it.

  These dreams weren’t like the night before. This time, he dreamt of fire and corpses reaching up from the earth. His friend Clayton cursed him for damning his soul to the eternal pits. Dark, oily hands grabbed him and pulled him down into the molten forges. An inferno licked at his legs as the hands tore at his clothes. He fell for ages into the dark abyss, landing hard on his chest and face. When he looked up, a dark figure approached. It hissed at him like a crowd might when a cheater got exposed at cards.

  “You took him from me!” the figure accused.

  Her makeup was permanent now. Her eye sockets as black as her lips. She was not beautiful like the day before. She was wraithlike and the edges of her ethereal black dress danced like tongues of flame, threatening him as she advanced. A bony finger extended toward him.

  “Twice!” she said. “Not just once but twice!”

  “I didn’t—” he begged her. “I couldn’t have!”

  “But you did,” she accused again.

  He couldn’t escape. There was nowhere to go. She embraced him with her icy cold arms, and the bottom of her dress enveloped him in dark flames. He screamed as he felt himself pulled into her like a ship into a whirlpool. She did not let go. And deep down, in the core of his being, he knew he deserved it.

  3

  A Tale of Three Arrows

  Ashton felt and saw light through his eyelids, but he didn’t want to get up. Sure, he hadn’t eaten anything in two days, and of course, he had no reason to want to return to his nightmares of Riley pulling him into the underworld. But after being on his feet and running for his life since his best friend’s funeral, he didn’t think it was too much to ask for just an hour more of slumber.

  The bird song assaulted his plans, laying aside any hope of returning to dream worlds. Then there was the cold metal against his neck.

  As it dawned on him that he didn’t wear a necklace, his eyes flitted open and he unconsciously moved forward, against the metal.

  “Careful!” a man warned him.

  Ashton found himself staring up a shoddily crafted, soft-edged iron blade. Three figures emerged from the brightness as he adjusted to the morning light.

  “What are you—?”

  “We’re relieving you of your belongings,” the man said. “Whatcha got?”

  Ashton raised his hand to his eyebrows to shade his eyes so he could get a better look at his brown-haired assailants. The leader, the one who had drawn on him, wore a simple brown tunic with a white but dirty undershirt. One of his henchmen was shirtless and flexing his chest muscles as he thumped a wooden cudgel against his hand. The other man wore a shredded green shirt and loose pants. He held an arrow in a bow aimed directly at Ashton’s face. Their faces looked gaunt. They might not have eaten in the past two days either.

  “What have I got?” Ashton asked in irritation and gesturing around the empty moss bed he had been sleeping in. “What does it look like I have?”

  “No one wanders into the forest with nothing on them,” the archer said. “We know you’ve hidden something ‘round here.”

  “I’ve hidden nothing,” Ashton insisted. “I’ve been running non-stop for two days!”

  “Where you off to?” the bandit leader asked.

  “I don’t much care,” Ashton admitted.

  “You get into trouble in one o’ the villages, boy?”

  Ashton grew silent. He didn’t know how to answer that.

  The bandit leader laughed and motioned to his friend the archer. “You think this one had something to do with the grave-robbing?”

  “Grave-robbing?” Ashton asked.

  “Yeah,” the burly man with the cudgel said. “He looks like the kind of shit weasel that would claw his way to the underworld…”

  “I didn’t dig into no grave!” Ashton said.

  “Oh yeah?” the archer asked, stretching the bow back farther.

  “I’m running from the ghoul that came out of it!”

  The bandit leader dropped his sword edge to the ground and took a step back. He smiled and gestured to his comrades. “You hear that guys? Boy’s running from a ghoul!”

  “I knew those bumpkins from Perketh were crazy,” the archer said. “They been telling everyone who comes through town center that a necromancer’s on the loose. Say they’re going to do something about it!”

  The bandit leader and the man with the cudgel laughed and shook their heads.

  “Well,” the bandit leader said, returning his sword to Ashton’s neck. “I guess you could say they’ve done something with their little witch-hunt. They’ve sent another dumb kid to us to be relieved of his copper.”

  “Third one in two days…” the man with the cudgel said.

  “Lucky number three!” the archer said, laughing.

  Ashton hoped the man was strong enough to laugh and hold that bow so taut at the same time.

  “Look,” Ashton said. “I don’t have any money. I haven’t eaten in two days. I’m tired and—”

  “We’re all tired,” the bandit leader said, forcing the dull point of the blade back against Ashton’s throat.

  “We’re all hungry!” the man with the cudgel said, pointing his wooden instrument at Ashton. “And that’s where you come in, doesn’t it?”

  “What you got in your pockets is ours!” the archer agreed.

  Ashton rummaged in his torn pockets and unturned each one to show the bandits that nothing was hidden.

  “I swear!” Ashton said. “I just want to go home. I’ve had a really rough couple of days!”

  “Oh, life is so hard in the village!” the man with the cudgel mocked in a sweet, high voice.

  “I can go inside whenever it rains,” the archer mimicked him, finally lowering his bow to join in the jibes.

  “What do you do, boy?” the bandit leader asked.

  “What do I do?”

  “In the village?” the leader added, pointing back to the southwest.

  “I’m an apprentice.”

  “An apprentice to what?”

  “A smithy…”

  “Master Nathan?” the leader asked, his eyes growing wide.

  The two companions whistled loudly and with exagg
eration.

  “We know your master quite well,” the archer said. “Quite a wealthy man, that one.”

  “Best smith this side of the capital, they say,” the bandit leader agreed.

  “Can make almost anything,” the archer agreed.

  “New armor,” the man with the cudgel said, pointing at his chest.

  “New arrows,” the archer said.

  “New sword,” the leader added. “But you’ll find this one, even though it’s dull, can still get the job done…”

  He slapped Ashton with the flat side of the blade and then returned the point to his neck.

  “I’m not helping you,” Ashton said defiantly.

  “You’re not helping us?” the man with the cudgel said, unconvinced. He slammed his weapon inches away from Ashton’s hip, startling him.

  “You’re right,” the bandit leader said. He pushed his blade hard against Ashton’s shoulder, driving Ashton’s back into the moss bed. Ashton grimaced in pain.

  “You’re helping yourself…” the bandit leader finished.

  A rustling in nearby bushes startled the three men, and the sound of heavy footsteps thundered toward them. The archer let loose an arrow, and the attacker took it to the chest, but he kept coming forward. Over his head, the man held a medium-sized boulder, easily as large as Ashton’s torso.

  “Clayton?!” Ashton yelled.

  A second arrow found its mark, but Clayton surged forward, and the bandit leader tripped over a root that crossed the forest path. He held up his non-sword arm to lamely fend off the blow, but Clayton brought the rock down so hard that the man’s hand went through his own skull with the rock.

  The man with the cudgel swung hard, connecting true against Clayton’s shoulder. The foul-smelling ghoul stumbled briefly but recovered with lightning speed. He picked up the boulder from its place atop the bandit leader and hurled it with immense force, striking the strong man in the chest.

  The man lost his grip on his cudgel and gurgled blood as he dropped to a knee against a tree stump. The archer let loose a third arrow, piercing Clayton’s back, but Clayton continued to walk toward the wounded man.

  “Gods, have mercy!” the archer begged, but the Gods had no intentions of answering his call.

  Clayton bashed the collapsed man’s head in with his own hands until there was nothing left but gobs of hair and brain matter clinging to the tree stump behind his body. By the time Clayton turned around, the archer was gone.

  Clayton wheezed and panted as he looked around the clearing.

  “Are you ok?” Ashton asked lamely.

  Clayton’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He pointed to the arrows and gave a series of muffled grunts and whines. His caved-in jaw wasn’t helping with communication, but somehow, Ashton knew exactly what he was saying. Perhaps because after knowing Clayton for fifteen years and hanging out with him every day since, Ashton didn’t need anything more than body language.

  “It’s really you, ain’t it?” Ashton asked.

  Clayton nodded.

  “You’re not some spirit?”

  Clayton’s shoulders sank, and a muffled cry hissed and gurgled out of his mouth or throat.

  “I’m sorry,” Ashton said.

  Clayton dropped to the ground and sat against a large maple tree. His breathing was labored, but he nodded in appreciation.

  “No, really,” Ashton said. “I’m sorry I ran from you.”

  Clayton raised two fingers.

  “Both times,” he agreed. “I’m sorry. Neither of them was called for. I was just scared.”

  Clayton nodded, shrugging off the slight as only two best friends could do. Ashton knew the issue was settled between them because apologizing and moving on was just something they had always been able to do.

  When Clayton earned the head apprentice job over Ashton, it was water under the bridge within minutes. Before long, Ashton was johnny-on-the-spot with Clayton’s ingots and kindling. He became Clayton’s number one fan in yet another aspect of their lives. When Clayton asked the prettiest girl in the village out, all it took was a simple nod between them, and any protest or claim Ashton might have felt was done. Ashton was happy for Clayton and Riley. He loved them both now, and Clayton most of all.

  “How are we going to tell Riley?” Ashton asked.

  Clayton sighed through his throat.

  “We’re going to have to give you a bath or something,” Ashton said.

  Clayton slightly shook his head, and Ashton laughed in understanding.

  “Just because you’re dead,” Ashton said, “doesn’t mean you have to smell like it.”

  Clayton picked up a small pebble and threw it at him.

  “Leave it to me,” Ashton said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  All traces of fear were gone as he walked over to Clayton. He grabbed one of the two feathered arrow shafts protruding from his friend’s chest.

  “Can you feel it?” Ashton asked. “Does it hurt?”

  Clayton shrugged. He put a hand against his own shoulder and pushed hard.

  “Just pressure? Is that what it feels like?”

  Clayton twisted his hand back and forth to signal more or less.

  “I’m going to pull this out, ok?”

  Clayton nodded and braced his arms around the maple tree trunk behind him. Ashton put weight on his heels as he straddled his foul friend and pulled with all his might. The arrow slid bloodily out, and the stench was overwhelming.

  “Oh, sweet baby gods!” Ashton exclaimed after breathing in too many of the fumes from the fresh wound. “Bless the altar of the Creator!”

  Clayton punched Ashton hard in the shoulder, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

  Ashton pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his nose and face. It was coated in dried sweat, dirt and moss pollen, but it was a hundred times better than smelling whatever was coming out of his friend’s body.

  He grabbed the second arrow in Clayton’s chest and repeated the process of gory retrieval. A small trickle of red, black and oozing white came out of the hole.

  Ashton dry heaved once, closed his eyes and walked over to a nearby patch of bright orange, black-eyed susans. He snapped them from their stems and returned to Clayton.

  “I have to plug the holes,” Ashton said.

  “Kmmm eeeoon,” Clayton protested.

  “Don’t come on me,” Ashton replied. “You’re leaking all over the place. And you smell. The flowers will help mask the odor.”

  Clayton continued to protest. Spittle drained down his neck.

  “Think about Riley,” Ashton said. He pointed toward the lines of blood and pus draining down Clayton’s abs. “Imagine how she’d react if she saw and smelled this.”

  Clayton went silent. He closed his eyes and tears began to form at the corners.

  “It’s going to be ok,” Ashton said. “She’s going to be excited to see you—”

  Clayton grunted.

  “How do I know? Well, I was at the funeral. Could you see us there?”

  Clayton shook his head.

  “Well, she was the most beautiful thing in the field,” Ashton said.

  Clayton pushed him on his shoulder.

  “You know she’s the prettiest creature in the village. She wore a black dress. White makeup. Black eyeliner and lips. I think she wanted to join you in the ground. She was dressed for the part.”

  Clayton moaned and slurred a response.

  “Then she attacked me last night in my dreams.”

  Clayton raised an eyebrow.

  “It was a dream, of course,” Ashton said as he turned Clayton to the side so he could grab hold of the third arrow that was lodged in his back. “Very dark. She dragged me to the underworld. I didn’t know it was her at first, but she grabbed me. She had all these dark hands, and she scolded me for taking you away from her. And just like you, she held up two fingers and claimed I did it twice. She was angry. She said I had taken you away from her twice!”

  Clayton
laughed and mumbled something.

  “Yeah, it does sound like her,” Ashton agreed.

  He pulled with all of his might and the arrow came out easily. He patched his friend up with more black-eyed susans, and chiseled into the maple tree with the bandit leader’s rusty sword until a steady drip of maple sap coated the blade. He transferred the sticky, sweet-smelling goo from the blade to Clayton’s many cuts and openings.

  “This will have to do for now,” Ashton said, admiring his work and appreciating the muted smell of death through the shirt that was still wrapped around his head. “Did you see a creek on your way here?”

  Clayton nodded affirmatively.

  “We’ll make our way back there once we find some soap,” Ashton said. “I’m betting the bandits had a camp nearby. We’ll rummage around there for some supplies. Can you move?”

  Clayton got to his feet with some small effort and nodded again.

  “Would you mind looking around for an encampment?”

  Clayton nodded.

  “If you find some food, maybe bring some back. I’m starving. Are you hungry?”

  Clayton shook his head and mumbled something incoherent.

  “You don’t feel pain, and you don’t get hungry anymore?”

  Clayton sighed.

  “Well, that’s a good thing right? One less thing to worry about, I guess.”

  Clayton’s mannerisms basically said yeah, I guess.

  “It’ll probably take us a day or so to get back to Perketh if we’re walking,” Ashton said. “Best to bring something to eat that carries well. Bread. Cheese. Fruit. Might be something in the forest along the way too. Mushrooms, maybe.”

  Clayton nodded as he lurched down the road. Ashton watched him until he disappeared into some bushes.

  “I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to this,” Ashton said as he bent over the mangled bandit leader and finding a copper coin and a wad of chewing weed.